


Raw

by Dain



Series: autistic tommy shepherd [1]
Category: Marvel, Young Avengers
Genre: Autistic Character, Gen, Self-Harm, Solitary Confinement, Suicidal Thoughts, fear of needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2099949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dain/pseuds/Dain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had been packaged and sealed in a small concrete cell, complete with power dampener, and it seemed that he was being left to rot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raw

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically the first of a few ficlets featuring autistic Tommy, although his autism isn't dealt with heavily in this one; I guess it serves as more of a prologue, but obviously he's still autistic and still has autistic traits even if that isn't the main focus of the fic. The suicidal ideation is very brief and not very determined, and is contained within the second-to-last paragraph only, if you want to skip it.

If it hadn’t been for the doctor taking blood samples – once every two days, or thereabouts – Tommy thought he might’ve started thinking that he had simply blinked out of existence, a lonely ghost haunting an empty cell.

No one talked to him. No one even entered the cell apart from the doctor, and as he disregarded Tommy, Tommy took to disregarding him. He had been packaged and sealed in a small concrete cell, complete with power dampener, and it seemed that he was being left to rot.

He took to pacing the length of the room, from the sink, along the side of the bed, to the door, and back again, over and over. There was nothing else to do. Having to move at such a slow pace made him antsier than normal and he flexed his hands as he walked, moving the fingers in and out and then tapping them against each other in regular, rhythmic motions. It didn’t do much to calm him down, not like it would have if he’d had his speed, and mostly the motions just frustrated him more.

At one point, a packet of exercises was pushed under his door along with breakfast and a pencil. He gave the packet a cursory glance and discarded it under the bed – even the all-consuming boredom of his cell wasn’t going to make him willingly do math – but the pencil was the real prize. The faint crunch of the wood underneath his teeth was soothing, and at least it gave him something to do.

The first time the syringe used to draw blood was brought in full and not empty, he didn’t notice until the doctor pulled away and, instead of leaving, stood and waited. Tommy recognized the groggy feeling as it began to steal over him and tried to lash out at the man, do something, but he was already falling away.

He was returned to his cell dizzy and disoriented. Sick, even. From that point onward, the doctor always brought someone with him during his visits, as if anticipating a fight. For the most part, Tommy gave them one, but it never did much good.

Tommy eventually rescued the packet from under his bed and used it to doodle on. He forced himself to never draw anything recognizable, instead sticking with abstract shapes and lots of little circles that filled up space quite nicely. It wasn’t until the pencil became unusable that he realized he had no way to sharpen it.

He kept pacing, up and down – sink, bed, door – in an effort to wear himself out. He was starting to have trouble sleeping, staring up at the ceiling at night for hours without any way to track the time. Sometimes he’d hear things after lights-out, little scratchy noises and strange whispery noises that he could sometimes force into the shape of words. He didn’t think that a place like that would have rodent problems, but you never knew.

The pencil broke and was mostly useless as a chewable object by that point anyway, so he began chewing on his fingers. He gnawed the area around his nails until they were bloody, and he was surprised at how effective the pain was at clearing his head, however momentary it might have been. Even better was the idea he had of pulling the staple out of the packet and using it to scratch at his arms. Sometimes he drew designs or patterns, sometimes just straight lines, sometimes he scratched at himself furiously without regard for detail and left bloody patches where all the skin had been scraped off. But it helped. The dull ache even seemed to help him sleep better, wonder of wonders.

He was certain that the doctor had seen the scratches and scabs, but he never said anything about them.

The visits became intolerable, even when the doctor did nothing more than take some blood and leave. He could feel every second of the needle sliding under his skin, the sharp pinch as it broke through and the friction against the surface as it was pushed in, and he hated everything about it. The memory of the metal piercing his skin would make him feel queasy and helpless and he would lie prone on his bed for hours afterward, eyes screwed shut and pressing stubby fingernails into his skin.

A few times, he vaguely considered dying. It wasn’t a very productive line of thought, as he had nothing to kill himself with and no real desire to carry it out. He thought death sounded a bit like the cell multiplied by whatever large number sounded most appropriate at the time, and that was definitely not something he was interested in.

More than anything, he just wanted to get out.


End file.
